


Only Our Enemies Leave Roses

by AntivanCrafts



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Pre-Relationship, Time Travel Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 03:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19165225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntivanCrafts/pseuds/AntivanCrafts
Summary: Five’s life has always drawn him into an orbit around Vanya, and every time he circles back around, it becomes harder to leave again.





	Only Our Enemies Leave Roses

The second time he met Vanya, she only came up to his waist. She looked up at him with dark, solemn eyes that held no fear, only curiosity, and reached out to tangle a hand in his shorts. “Dad said you aren't allowed to time travel,” she told him. “He says it's dangerous.”

Five swallowed back all the words he'd never said and crouched beside her. “It is,” he managed to say after he wrestled the words past the knot in his throat, “but not for me.”

He gently untangled her small hands from his shorts, and all he could think was that he wished he could stop time entirely. That he could stay here in this moment with Vanya until their days ran out. But Vanya had been contained too much already, in too many ways. So he folded his hands over hers and smiled that brittle smile that tore him to pieces and said, “I'm going to go on a little trip now, Vanya. And when I come back, everything will be better.”

Vanya wrinkled her nose and laughed at him, using her other hand to cover the curve of a smile he wished he had the chance to see again, and then again after that. “Five, don't be _weird_. You know we aren't allowed to play pretend until Saturday. You'll get us both in trouble if Dad or Pogo hears you calling me a civilian name.”

“Right, sorry.” He dipped his head down briefly, thinking of dark rain and ghosts Klaus would never have been able to hear, before he bent his forehead to hers the way they had used to. “Hey, Seven?” He rasped. “What would be in your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?” It was a question they'd asked each other often, and while his answer had changed every time he was asked, hers was always the same.

”Tomorrow,” she said with the same hushed excitement that a child raised outside of this house would have saved for a holiday or birthday candles. “Pogo says tomorrow is like a promise. Every tomorrow is new, and bright like a penny at the bottom of a pool.”

Five’s half smile went even stiffer on his face, almost painfully so. “I'll find you tomorrow,” he said slowly. It felt like every word had to be pulled out of him. “That's a promise I can keep.”

Vanya’s brows drew together as she tilted her head with a puzzled little frown, and then she patted his cheek. “Go backwards, first, or dad will get mad,” she said. “I'll meet you there, okay?”

A laugh, quiet and stilted as the flicker of light in his palm. “You usually do.”

The third time he met Vanya, she found him, first. He'd had to stop at the bathroom, and was still slumped over the sink with his hands dangling in dark water when he heard her splash across the wet floor towards him. “Five?” She asked a touch uncertainly, and little wonder at that.

“It's okay, Seven,” he eased out on a sigh. “It's not my blood.”

Small feet slapped a few steps closer, and she curled her fingers into his shorts. “You know Dad says not to time travel, Five,” she said a little reproachfully. “You need me to watch your back, remember? We pinkie promised that you'd take me with you when you leave so I could protect you.”

Five closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at his own expression in the mirror. “I didn't mean to leave without you,” he breathed. “I tried to come back to help you.”

“That's not how it works, Five!” She protested, but it was quiet, almost tentative, the defense of someone who was used to having her boundaries trampled into the dirt. “I'm here for you, not the other way around!”

Five bent until his head bumped up against the mirror. He could feel that he'd left a wet smear on the glass, and sighed out, “We’re puzzle pieces, right?” It had an odd cadence, a rhythm that came from repetition. He didn't have to look to see her brighten, and he wished he could turn around and hold her again, just once, without the world coming apart at the seams.

“The picture doesn't make any sense without both of us,” she finished. “That's why you're here, right? You wanted to fit again?”

“That's right. But it isn't quite right, not yet.” It felt heavy, and so did he, but he lifted his lips up in an imitation of a smile at the mirror, even though she couldn't see it. “I'll keep trying, though. I pinkie promised.”

”You can stay just a little while if you want? You don't have to,” she added quickly, blurting out the words as soon as the thought that he might not want to occurred to her. “I know you're busy and it must be really hard time traveling, and…”

He could almost feel her twisting her fingers together the way she'd used to (still did) [would], but he couldn't let himself turn around to see. If he did, he wouldn't have the strength to tell her, “I can't, Seven. This is important.”

”Oh,” she said, small and smaller and sma

The fourth time he met Vanya, he followed the sound of her music down into the secret chamber. The door was open, and he saw her move in amongst sharp edged shadows. He waited and he watched and after a little while he had to sit, resting his back against the door to the chamber so the room would stop spinning.

After a while, the music stopped. Wood scraped softly on metal, accompanied by a short, mournful half note, and then he heard the soft pad of bare feet hurry towards him. She’d always hated wearing shoes inside, he thought distantly, and let his head drop back until it hit the doorframe. “Ow,” he said.

“Five!” Vanya’s voice was much louder and much closer than he'd expected, but when he opened his eyes her worried face swam disconcertingly until he closed them again. “You're _hurt,_ Five!”

“I know,” he said reasonably. “I said ow. You heard me.”

“Not _that_ , dorkus!” She huffed, and he felt her breath ghost warm through the ragged hole ripped through his shirt, and hole underneath. “I- this is bad, Five, you're- you're _bleeding_ , I don't-” Her voice was rising, panic of more than a few flavors mixing together. He could feel the air flex over his wound, and he hissed, then reached out without opening his eyes to put them over her own. He'd known that would be hovering over his chest, and they were. She tried to pull away, hiccuping on the edge of a sob. “You need mom, sh-she can fix you, like your tie, you know? It- it was ripped-”

“Ripped a bit more than my tie this time,” he said with a vague wave of his hand. It started to fall a bit, before he caught it and patted vaguely at her cheek. He missed, but her skin was warm against his, and he hadn't messed up that badly.

“I’m going to go get mom!” A scrape, and then a softness drawn in liquid ribbons across his face as she stood, and when had he fallen?

He meant to tell her to stay, but she was already running, the way she always was, and then he was gone again.

The fifth time he met Vanya, she found him sitting on the edge of the bed in her room. He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting there, or how long he'd been staring at the walls until they lost cohesion and blurred into multiple, distorted images. It was no different than the way he'd used to stare at numbers, trying to force them to give him the answers he wanted, except everything was different.

Repetition had a way of stripping away the meaning of things. Say a word enough times, and it became meaningless sounds strung together. Spill enough blood as soldiers, as children, and it wasn't frightening or dangerous anymore, it was just a game. Relive one week enough times in a row, and something would fall apart at the seams. And that something was him.

This had been the one thousand and forty-second time he had relived staring at Vanya across a stage made heavy with the weight of billions, terror and love and grief tasting like salt in his throat as he had lifted his hand to stop her.

And he had failed.

And he had failed.

And he had failed.

And

then he had gotten up and tried again, at least one more time, because that is all he knew how to do. Until that one (endless spirals of one) week wore away all of his messy, unnecessary rough spots until he was left shaking and raw and empty, wanting (needing) nothing more than to be with her. To look at her and allow himself this one small comfort, just once, and then he would get up and try again, at least one more time.

She looked exactly the same every time he came here, but so different, all at once. The face that was as familiar to him as the back of his own hand was wary when she first peeked around the door, only to soften when she saw him.

He'd glanced over reflexively at the movement, then back to where his eyes had settled. “It's been so long since I've taken the opportunity to just… sit in here,” he said, almost to himself.

”What do you mean?” She'd taken a few steps into the room, and he saw that she had on the pajamas Grace had made for her. Music notes in soft colors on a grey background. “You were just here yesterday, we went over literature, and you said-”

”Was your room always this small?” He said, and Vanya bounced back on her heels with a small noise that ached in his chest.

”Why wouldn't it be? It's… my room. Why would it be bigger?”

”Everyone else has bigger rooms. I did.”

Vanya was quiet for a few seconds, and he looked over in time to see some sort of expression twist into a smile. “They need it more than I do. I'm a mouse, remember? When we play animals, you always want to be a cat, and I like playing the mouse. It's small, and cute, and sleeps in a little hole, right?”

Mice live their whole lives being afraid, he thought. They live small lives in small places because they aren't allowed to reach higher. Because the cats won't let them. “Right,” he whispered. He looked at the music sheets carefully taped up on the walls to attempt to disguise cracks, and he felt tired. Indescribably weary, like he could just lie down on Vanya’s little bed and never wake up.

But if he wanted her to wake up, and keep waking up, he had to keep going.

“I'm going to go soon,” he said with some effort. “I just needed to collect myself.”

Warmth on his knee. He opened eyes he hadn't even realized had fallen closed to see a face he had last seen locked in a rictus as she hurled Klaus across the theatre as easily as a child with an unwanted toy. This time there was no blood in his face obscuring those eyes and that little crinkle between her brows before she leaned in to wrap him up in a hug. “You don't need to,” she told him. He sat stiff and tense for long seconds, and then something broke in him and he sagged into her arms. She only held him closer, long hair tumbling down her shoulders in a curtain. “You don't. I know Dad will be mad, but… but I'll protect you. I'll hide you in here, until you don't look so tired anymore, okay? You can use my heaviest blankets you like to roll up in, and-”

”Seven.”

”-and you won't have to go on any missions,” she continued, speaking faster and with an edge of tears creeping into her voice, “because he doesn't know you're here. You can sleep and, and rest, and we can talk. I never- never get to see you anymore, and-”

”Seven.” She stopped, but couldn't stop the wet spots he could feel on the shoulders of his jacket beneath her face. “Seven, I can’t stay. This is something I need to do. It's… it's the only thing. I was made for this.”

”Don't be _dumb_.” She was still sniffling, but she sounded stern, too. And then she pinched him. “You aren't a record player, remember? You're a person. You're Five. And Fives are made for hugging and talking to and, and everything.”

He sat and he listened and he wanted nothing more in the world in that moment than to stay right here. To hug and talk and do anything, be anything, because she wanted him to. He was exhausted in a bone-deep, all consuming way, and if he just closed his eyes, it would be so easy to allow the weight of six people drop off of his shoulders.

But he couldn't. Because if he did that, he wouldn't be Five.

So he put a gentle hand on her shoulder and pushed her away until he could see her again. Her eyes were wide and wet and dark and weren't looking at him yet the way she would, and he had to turn his own eyes away before she saw the way they'd started to itch and burn. “I have to go,” he said again. “I have to go, and you have to stay.”

He knew without looking at her that Vanya had pulled away without moving an inch, and it became that much harder to force his voice to sound calm and even. “You're my protector, right? I need you to help me.”

Warmth again, a pinkie hesitantly wrapping around his own. “Don't even ask,” she said. “We promised.”

”You always keep your promises don't you, Seven. You always look out for me.”

”Of course I do,” she said, solemn and unafraid, only filled with determination. “You’re my person. And I'm yours. It'll always be that way, no matter what.”

He'd closed his eyes again so that he wouldn't have to look at her anymore as he started to shift, because he knew that if he did, he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to do it. That meant the last he saw of her was an extended hand with a pinkie curled around nothing at all.

The sixth time he met Vanya, she only came up to his waist and she smiled at him like the world was brand new.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this far! This was my very first Umbrella Academy story, and I am very excited to share it with all of you. If you liked it or just want to talk about it with me, feel free to leave a comment <333


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